Heavenly Father, thank you for
bringing us together this morning, and we pray that you will fulfill
for us the promise that where two or three are gathered together
in the name of your Son, he will be among us. For of what value
is our gathering if Christ does not meet with us? In this scripture,
may we see him And may our spirits be encouraged
at the sight of him. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Now, Shulamith has been speaking.
She continues in verse 12. She says, let us go early to
the vineyards to see if the vines have budded, if their blossoms
have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give
you my love. Now, she mentioned in the previous
verses, she said, let us go to the countryside, spend the night
in the villages. So she's expecting that she and
Solomon will go out into the countryside, but overnight they
would be in a village somewhere. We pointed out that in the countryside,
you know, the Church of the Lord Jesus does not, is not found
within, shall we call it, the civilized portions of religion,
if you will. They are, just as the Jews were
at one time, we're out in the wilderness in this world. But
we are content to be there so long as Christ is with us. And
then, so far as spending the night in the villages, we saw
that the word for village comes from the same word as for atonement,
because the word actually means a covering. And the walls of
a city provided a covering or a protection for them. And the
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is our atonement, that's
where we dwell with him in safety. She goes on and says, she mentioned
that spend the night in the villages. And therefore, she says, let
us plan to get up early and go out to the vineyard and to see
if the vines have budded and if their blossoms have opened. Commentator said that the reference,
of course, must be to spring. One even narrowed it down to
the month of May. The thing is, I know that Hebrew
months are two weeks offset from ours. In other words, when you
hear the name of a of a Hebrew month, generally speaking, it
starts halfway through one of our months and ends halfway through
the next one. But it certainly is the time when plants are just
coming to life again after the wintertime. We don't have to
spend much time examining the details of the vines and grapes
and pomegranates. I'm sure that some significant
points could be made from each aspect. Let's go to the vineyards,
see if they're in bloom, of course, mentioning grapes. And let's
see if the pomegranates are in bloom. And maybe there's meaning
to all that. But I know this, that all of
this is designed to show us that union with Christ is a matter
of living That is, it is not a dead religious experience. It is something that is connected
with life. They aren't going forth in the
winter, and she doesn't say, let's go out and see if we can
find some snow. She said, let's go out, and she's
looking for things that pertain to life. The Lord Jesus Christ
says, I have come that they might have life, and they might have
it abundantly, or to the full. Now, when our Lord says, I've
come that they might have life, what is he saying? He's saying
they don't have life. youth groups and the Bible school
I went to, you know, which is relatively young people, you
know, 18 to 22, they're always trying to get us excited. And
they would say, do you want that abundant life? And to them, the
abundant life in Christ consisted of always being full of a kind
of an effervescent sense of spirituality and being happy and all that.
That's not what our Lord meant at all. The abundance of life
he promises, or that he said he would bring to his people,
was an abundance of a life they did not have. It was not merely
an improvement on the life they already have. You know, the life
that was given to us by our parents, that's natural life. And it will end. Our Lord did not come to improve
that life. Now, let me make this disclaimer,
having said that. I do believe that the life of
faith, the experience of life in this world is improved for
the one who believes, but that's not what the Lord was talking
about. Actually, if the world looks on the life
of a believer, They generally look at it as a life of less
abundance. They look at it as a life of
restriction. But of course, that's because
in their minds, sin, in one form or another, is what they are
seeking. Whether it be what is commonly
called sin, you know, the transgressions of the law and things like that,
or what is the more deadly form of sin or deceptive form of sin
is the sinfulness of unbelieving religiosity, such as the Pharisees
had. Paul said, as touching the righteousness
which is in the law, I was blameless. However, he was guilty of great
sin in that in all his time living as a Pharisee, he was living
in unbelief and rebellion against God in spiritual matters. So they don't see what the believer
has as in any kind of improvement. But the Lord came to bring a
life that is not natural to us. It's life from above, it's spiritual
life. And he did not bring it to us
in thimblefuls. He said, I've come that they
might have life and they might have it to the full. Now, our
experience of spiritual life is always hindered by the fact
that we are in the flesh. And we will be, what the scriptures
would say, in the flesh until this flesh dies. And Paul, in
speaking of the resurrection, he says, what kind of body shall
it be? To be honest, I don't know what
he means by this, but I know what he said. He said, it will
be a spiritual body. And possibly what he means by
that is a body which is not the product of natural reproduction,
but a body which has been formed by the spirit of God. Maybe that's
what he means by it, I'm not sure. I know this, it's not subject
to death. And we also know that the opening
experience of salvation, the Lord calls it being born again. Our salvation does not begin
with our natural birth, because no connection to any natural
person can bring you any spiritual benefit. it does not commence with a ceremony. Now, where I come from, down
in the southeast, there is a denomination of churches called the Church
of Christ. There's actually two denominations that take that
name. But the one down there was started
by a father and son. And their name was Campbell. I think it was in the first half
of the 1800s. But they claimed that they were
restoring the true church. Well, here's one of their beliefs.
They believe that not only are believers commanded to be baptized
by immersion, they claim there is no salvation until then. Some
of them going so far as to saying that it's not until you reach
the bottom, in other words, you're dead and buried, then you rise
again. And that instigates, as it were,
the new birth. That's not true. The new birth
is the work of the Spirit of God. God the Holy Spirit does
this, and He, being God, does things when He wants to and how
He wants to, and He does it without the help of men. So the beginning experience of
salvation is a sovereign work of the Spirit of God in imparting
spiritual life to those who have been chosen and redeemed. The Father determined to save
a people. The Son came and redeemed them,
made atonement for them, and the Spirit comes and gives them
life and, as it were, collects the redeemed property of the
Lord. And there is nothing that we
have done or that anyone else has done that brings that event
to pass. Now, I know that faith is always
the product of gospel preaching. And I know that gospel preaching
is done by human beings, isn't it? I mean, I do it. But I can
tell you by my experience, me preaching the gospel has never
saved anybody. No one is ever saved apart from
the preaching of the gospel, but the preaching of the gospel
itself is a dead thing unless the spirit of God joins his life-giving
power to it. So God doesn't look to us at
all for bringing about life. And so the initial experience
of God's salvation is the imparting of life. Throughout our lives,
the experience of being a believer is the experience of God providing
for and sustaining that spiritual life. In the story, Pilgrim's Progress, the part in there about the struggles
of pilgrim, you know? And on one side you had the devil
trying to put out a fire, and on the other side you have the
Spirit of God constantly fanning that flame, keeping it alive,
keeping it going. And consider this. It was not
you that gave yourself life. nor is it you that sustains it. Rather, God sustains that life. And so far as I can tell from
scripture, our departure from this world and this existence
through death or through the return of the Lord Jesus Christ
does not involve any change in what we are spiritually right
now. It involves the removal of those
aspects of us which are natural, which are the product of being
born of other human beings. That is simply removed. The body
and a new body. And again, the scriptures are
not absolutely clear about this. What kind of body is it? I don't
know, but it's a body. and it has nothing of the curse,
of the decay. It proves no hindrance to the
desires of our spirit to see God, to know Him, to love Him,
to praise Him, to be united to Him. Right now, as Paul mentions
in Romans chapter 7, the flesh is just, it's an irritant. He
says, in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing. But spiritually, we've been made
alive. And there's a warfare between flesh and spirit. At
our deaths or at the return of the Lord, that warfare shall
be brought to an end. Again, she's back to the Song
of Solomon now. She says, let's go early to the
vineyards. In all of our pursuit of Christ
and things pertaining to Christ, let us be early about it. There's that song. Savior, like
a shepherd, lead us. Now, it's in hymn books, but
it was originally written as a children's song for what would
be called Sunday school classes. They would learn that, Savior,
like a shepherd, lead us. And one of the verses, and I
didn't understand it when I was a kid, but it's because language
is 150 or so years old. But it says, early, let us seek
thy favor. Early, let us seek thy grace.
Well, the writer wasn't talking about early in the day, talking
about early in life. And well should it be that to
whatever degree we can, that we bring our children under the
hearing of the gospel in the prayer and in the hope that God
will use that gospel preaching in them to do for them what he
did for us and that early in life they will come to seek the
Lord and find him and find salvation in him. You know, some people believe that, you
know, you have to be a certain age before you can really believe
the gospel, but I learned something. This was during the summer after
my first year of Bible school, and I was a counselor at the
camps that that same organization had, and I was with the elementary
age kids. Well, it was supposed to be.
Now, the rules were you couldn't come to that camp unless you'd
already gone through kindergarten, but somehow or another, a little
fellow named Eric got in there, and he was only five years old.
And he was in my cabin. Well, we were instructed, as
was the practice of the kind of free will fundamentalism I
came from, you're supposed to try to get each one of them by
themselves and talk them into, quote, accepting Jesus as your
savior or praying the prayer or whatever. So one night after
devotions, I said, Eric, come with me. And I found a place
where he and I could go and talk privately. And I asked him, I
said, Eric, if you were to die tonight, Where would you go? That was the way we'd bring these
things up, you know. He said, heaven. And I was really
kind of taken back, because those five-year-olds don't have a ready
answer about anything like that. I said, are you sure? He said,
yes. I said, how are you sure? He said, because God said so.
Well, you know, here I was, 19 years old, and had a whole year
of Bible school under my belt. Certainly, I could unsettle this
young boy. You know, and I did all I could
to move him from that point. I learned something about what
faith is that night. You know, we think that faith involves
a great theological understanding. But Paul said, you see, you're
calling an election, brethren, how not many wise according to
the world. What's he mean? Not many educated.
God has chosen his people. from humanity, and most of them
are already looked down on by the world. They are not the so-called choice
of the world. So if God is going to choose
his people from among those that are not known for their great
intellect, we should not think that the gospel requires a great
intellect to believe it. And so here this little five-year-old,
he hadn't even learned to read yet as far as I knew, and every time
I pressured him a little to see if I couldn't create a little
doubt or something, his answer every time was, and I'd say,
how are you sure? God said so. And that's what faith is, and
it doesn't require that we understand everything God says. Faith in
its essence is, well, God said it, it must be true, even if
I don't understand all that it means. And so here I was with my full
year of Bible school, and I got taught a lesson by a five-year-old
about what faith is. And so let us go early, and we
should hope and pray for the conversion of our children early
in life. There's nothing preventing it
so far as their age is concerned. In Christ, there's neither old
or young, says the Scriptures. It's irrelevant. And then, even those of us, you know, we've
got years behind us, but still, let us be early, that is, immediate,
in anything we pursue concerning Christ and the things connected
to him. Paul said, I press on, I press
on. Now, some would use this and
say, we ought to get up in the morning and have our devotions
and pray. Fine, if that's the way you're
turned. Some people, there's no use them trying to do anything
of any significance the first hour they're awake until they
can get some coffee in them. Nothing of significance is going
to happen. But this should be our attitude that first and foremost,
Christ and those things connected to him shall be our pursuit and
we shall get at them at the earliest, soonest possible time. Now life
interferes. Health interferes. Flesh interferes. But let us have this determination,
that as much as lies within us, we shall seek Him early. And then let's see if there's
fruit, she says. Let's check the vineyard. Let's look for blossoms. Now,
the Bible, as it describes spiritual life, or the experience of salvation,
casts it in the idea that not only is it a matter of life,
it's a matter of life that bears fruit. Let me read you several
scriptures from the New Testament. Matthew 13, 23. Now this is from
the parable of the sower. But he who receives seed on the
good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who
indeed bears fruit and produces, some a hundredfold, some 60,
some 30. So it's not intended that we
merely be alive, but that we be the kind of living thing that
bears fruit. That our Lord says in, John chapter
15 verse 5, here's several verses from John 15. I am the vine,
you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in
you, you will bear much fruit apart from me. He means by cut
off from him. You can do nothing. You know,
and if you go out, Bonnie's got a grapevine in our garden. Well,
if we went out there, the leaves have come out, maybe there's
even blossoms. But if we go out there and one
of those branches coming off the vine, we clip it off, what's
gonna happen? It's gonna die. So the Lord says, if you remain
in me, that is connected to me, you will bear fruit. Without
being connected to me, you can't do anything. In John 15, eight
it says, this is to my father's glory that you bear much fruit,
showing yourselves to be my disciples. John 15 verse 16 says, you did
not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you
might go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. And so that whatever
you ask in my name, the father will give you. And then in Galatians
chapter five, verses 22 and 23, but the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is
no law. Now I did a search, and I could
not find in the New Testament any instance of fruit being spoken
of in the plural. He didn't say you will bear fruits.
He didn't say the fruits of the Spirit are. Fruit, singular. Now when you go out to a vine,
a grapevine, do you expect to find not only grapes but also
apples and bananas and peaches? No. A grapevine produces one
kind of fruit, doesn't it? And believers, it says they produce
fruit. And while this fruit Paul describes
its various aspects, you know, love, joy, peace, long suffering,
and so forth, it is still a singular fruit. Why is it a, why must
it be considered a singular fruit? That page of notes doesn't even
belong in there. That's why it was confusing. Here we go. It's a singular fruit because
it arises from a single vine. The Lord said, I am the vine,
you are the branches. Now the branches always bear
fruit according to the nature of the vine they're attached
to. If you, I mean, a vine grows
up, and I know in modern gardening and stuff, they can
splice on different branches, you know, and, but we're talking,
you know, this was within the context of the way things naturally
happened. Grape vines give rise to grape branches, which give
rise to grapes. That's it. That's all you expect
from them. There is a single vine to which
all of the people of God are attached, and it is Christ, so
it produces a singular fruit. Also, it's a singular fruit because
all of this fruit arises from a single life. A single kind
of life. And then all the fruit is the
same. It's a singular kind of fruit because all of it comes
from a single seed, the gospel of Christ. You know, when Paul
in Galatians 5 says the works of the spirit, excuse me, the
works of the flesh are this, and it's a horrible list. Now the flesh has multiple works,
plural works. Why? Because the flesh has many
sources. The so-called religions of the
flesh, they're arrived at, I mean there's all kinds of fleshly
religions in the world, and they produce all kinds of horrible
things. But said the fruit of the Spirit.
All through the book of Galatians, Paul is contrasting the law with
the gospel. And then right in the middle
of that, in Galatians 5, he brings up this contrast between flesh
and spirit. What point is he making there?
What is the flesh? Or what's connected to it in
terms of religion? The law. Now, we're not saying the law
is bad. No. But that's all the flesh
knows how to connect to. And those who pursue God by the
law, that is, they try to gain the favor of God by their obedience
to the law, what does it produce? All kinds of wicked works. Always does. Now, it can cause
people to put a pretty good covering on their wickedness. But generally
speaking, those churches that emphasize righteous or holy living
the most, if you can ever dig in and get underneath, you will
find horrible rottenness. The more rules, the less holiness. That's just the way it works. But when a church is governed
by the gospel, there's life. And where there's life, there's
this singular fruit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
all those things. Now, we never produce these things
in perfection, do we? Because again, we're tied to
this flesh, this body of death. And it has its own ways. But
where the Spirit is, where the gospel is that which is used
to create life, to sustain life, and to direct life. You will
find this lovely fruit. Well, I wanted to finish this
chapter so I can, so give me just a second here with verse
13. The mandrakes send out their fragrance, and at our door is
every delicacy, both new and old, that I have stored up for
you, my lover. Mandrakes. Don't know for sure
that the Hebrew word there actually is
a mandrake, as modern science would identify a particular plant.
That's the case with a lot of such things in the Old Testament,
you know, trying to identify this tree or that tree or this
plant or that plant. It's kind of difficult. But while
we aren't absolutely certain that the mandrake plant is what
is intended here, we do know what the significance of mandrakes
is. It's already mentioned on one other occasion, and that's
Genesis 30. And what happened? Leah, the first wife of Jacob,
her son, Reuben, found some mandrakes and brought it to the mother.
Rachel. Jacob's second wife came up and
said, let me have some of those mandrakes your son found. And
Leah's response was, she says, isn't it enough you took my husband?
What was her point? It was the belief back then that
mandrakes were both an aphrodisiac and enhanced the likelihood of
fertility. Now, the Bible's not saying that
mandrakes actually do those things. Just as the Bible talks to us
in the language of the people to whom he spoke these words,
Hebrew, he also spoke in terms of their cultural understandings.
That's what people thought. Okay, Mandrakes, that's what
Solomon evidently still thought. What's she saying here? She is
connecting their relationship with this concept, again, of
fruitfulness. You know, we speak of Children,
maybe we don't speak of it this way unless we're speaking from
the Bible, we talk about children as the fruit of the womb. And
so what she's saying in here, the mandrakes send out their
fragrance. It is the desire of the church of God, not only to
be united to Christ, but to bear children, as it were, for him. The church of the Lord Jesus
is in a sense both mother and child. Every member of the Church
of God is a child, but the church in a sense is
the mother, because through us the gospel is preached into this
world, and children, the children of God, are brought forth. The
fragrance of Fragrance of Christ, which is how the gospel is presented
by Paul. We are sweet smelling savor of
Christ unto God when we preach the gospel. And it is a fruitful
smell. It bears fruit for his glory. All right, we'll leave off there.